Sanctuary

opened the door and stepped gingerly down.

She walked swiftly to the house, her stockinged feet flinching and cringing

from the rough earth, watching the house. She mounted to the porch and

entered the kitchen and stopped, listening into the silence. The stove was

cold. Upon it the blackened coffee-pot sat, and a soiled skillet; upon the

table soiled dishes were piled at random. I haven't eaten since . . . since

. . . Yesterday was one day, she thought, but I didn't eat then. I haven't

eaten since . . . and that night was the dance, and I didn't eat any

supper. I haven't eaten since dinner Friday, she thought. And now it's

Sunday, thinking about the bells in cool steeples against the blue, and

pigeons crooning about the belfries like echoes of the organ's bass. She

returned to the door and peered out. Then she emerged, clutching the coat

about her.

She entered the house and sped up the hall. The sun lay

52 WILLIAM FAULKNER

now on the front porch and she ran with a craning motion of her head,

watching the patch of sun framed in the door. It was empty. She reached

the door to the right of the entrance and opened it and sprang into the

room and shut the door and leaned her back against it. The bed was empty.

A faded patchwork quilt was wadded across it. A khaki-covered canteen and

one slipper lay on the bed. On the floor her dress and hat lay.

She picked up the dress and hat and tried to brush them with her hand and

with the corner of her coat. Then she sought the other slipper, moving

the quilt, stooping to look under the bed. At last she found it in the

fireplace, in a litter of wood ashes between an iron fire-dog and an

overturned stack of bricks, lying on its side, half full of ashes, as

though it had been flung or kicked there. She emptied it and wiped it on

her coat and laid it on the bed and took the canteen and hung it on a

nail in the wall. It bore the letters U S and a blurred number in black

stencil. Then she removed the coat and dressed.

Long legged, thin armed, with high small buttocks-a small childish figure

no longer quite a child, not yet quite a woman -she moved swiftly,

smoothing her stockings and writhing into her scant, narrow dress. Now

I can stand anything, she thought quietly, with a kind of dull, spent

astonishment; I can stand just anything. From the top of one stocking she

removed a watch on a broken black ribbon. Nine o'clock. With her fingers

she combed her matted curls, combing out three or four cottonseed-hulls.

She took up the coat and hat and listened again at the door.

She returned to the back porch. In the basin was a residue of dirty

water. She rinsed it and filled it and bathed her face. A soiled towel

hung from a nail. She used it gingerly, then she took a compact from her

coat and was using it when she found the woman watching her in the

kitchen door.

"Good morning," Temple said. The woman held the child on her hip. It was

asleep. "Hello, baby," Temple said, stooping; "you wan s'eep all day?

Look at Temple." They entered the kitchen. The woman poured coffee into

a cup.

"It's cold, I expect," she said. "Unless you want to make up a fire."

From the oven she took a pan of bread.

"No," Temple said, sipping the lukewarm coffee, feeling her insides move

in small, tickling clots, like loose shot. "I'm not hungry. I haven't

eaten in two days, but I'm not hungry. Isn't that funny? I haven't eaten

in . . ." She looked at the woman's back with a fixed placative grimace.

"You haven't got a bathroom, have you?"

"What?" the woman said. She looked at Temple across

SANCTUARY 53

her shoulder while Temple stared at her with that grimace of cringing and

placative assurance. From a shelf the woman took a mail-order catalogue

and tore out a few leaves and handed them to Temple. "You'll have to go

to the barn, like we do."

"Will IT' Temple said, holding the paper. "The barn."

"They're all gone," the woman said. "They wont be back this morning."

"Yes," Temple said. "The barn."

"Yes; the barn," the woman said. "Unless you're too pure to have to."

"Yes," Temple said. She looked out the door, across the weed-choked

clearing. Between the sombre spacing of the cedars the orchard lay bright

in the sunlight. She donned the coat and hat and went toward the barn,

the torn leaves in her hand, splotched over with small cuts of

clothes-pins and patent wringers and washing-powder, and entered the

hallway. She stopped, folding and folding the sheets, then she went on,

with swift, cringing glances at the empty stalls. She walked right

through the barn. It was open at the back, upon a mass of jimson weed in

savage white-and-lavender bloom. She walked on into the sunlight again,

into the weeds. Then she began to run, snatching her feet up almost

before they touched the earth, the weeds slashing at her with huge,

moist, malodorous blossoms. She stooped and twisted through a fence of

sagging rusty wire and ran downhill among trees.

At the bottom of the hill a narrow scar of sand divided the two slopes

of a small valley, winding in a series of dazzling splotches where the